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iPhone 4 Reception Recall Ruckus Roundup
Readers today have been sending tons of stories about the iPhone 4, so here are a few of the highlights: Following the Consumers Reports announcement that the iPhone has antenna problems, Andy Patrizio asks if Apple can withstand the pressure to recall, while CNet estimates that a recall would cost them $1.5B. But that's just the latest on the iPhone 4 — the long running carrier exclusivity lawsuit rumors have been upgraded to Class Action status.
How you like them Apples?
I already returned my iPhone 4, barely got it out of the box before return shipping. Droid X looks like it'll be replacing my half-functional iPhone 3G tomorrow.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
Jobs is too arrogant to allow a recall...they'll find a way to blame customers for this eventually, or weasel out of doing a full recall.
With all the Apple publicity they probably made an extra $1.5 billion. It's not like the iphone is gods gift, anyone ever been to europe/asia? They had phones like this five years ago.
In 3 days Apple's stock has gone down a huge 5%
Citation needed. Average price end of last week: 257. Average price today/yesterday: 251. 5% of 250 = 12.5. The local max (Thursday, 262) and the local min (Tuesday, 247) come out to 6%. And the max to the min means nothing, especially when they are as brief as they have been with AAPL.
Not to say Apple's stock has not dropped, but it has not gone down a huge 5%. Source: google.com/finance
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
"the majority of those who trade stocks are still very emotional"
Not true. The major owners in Apple, as any major company on the stock market, are mutual funds and institutional holders with 72% of the stocks. Maybe the majority of the small time investors are emotional, I don't know, but that is a completely different thing since they can only affect the stock price so much.
Thanks for browsing at -1
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Anandtech's review (which I believe is far more in-depth than the CR?) claims that the iPhone4 holds onto a call at -113dbm. There is no doubt there is a antenna gap bridging problem and that this DOES cause the signal to drop, but at the same time the overall antenna performance seems better versus ie the 3gs. Weird.
From my day of testing, I've determined that the iPhone 4 performs much better than the 3GS in situations where signal is very low, at -113 dBm (1 bar). Previously, dropping this low all but guaranteed that calls would drop, fail to be placed, and data would no longer be transacted at all. I can honestly say that I've never held onto so many calls and data simultaneously on 1 bar at -113 dBm as I have with the iPhone 4, so it's readily apparent that the new baseband hardware is much more sensitive compared to what was in the 3GS. The difference is that reception is massively better on the iPhone 4 in actual use.
Anand found that gripping the iPhone 4 a certain way could indeed cause up to 24dB of signal drop. This was worst-case, with a sweaty deathgrip. Touching more lightly or with less moisture had less of an effect. Gripping other smartphones near their antennas also caused a drop in signal.
The non-linear signal representation of the "bars" can also lead to some confusion related to this. The valid range is between -113dB (no signal) and -51dB (full signal). However, 5 bars represents the range of -51 to -91. 4 bars is -91 to -101. 3 bars is -101 to -103. 2 bars is -103 to -107. 1 bar is -107 to -113. If you have a full strength 5 bar connection, that 24dB drop won't even move you out of the 5th bar. If you've just barely got 5 bars, the same 24dB drop can put you down to 1 or 0 bars.
Anand's testing also confirmed what sjonke said in the comment above. Even when it was showing the same signal strength, the iPhone 4 was better at not dropping calls compared to the 3GS. The page shows a screenshot of a 625/31 run on Speedtest.net during a call with only -113dB.
Given that stock pricing has a lot to do with how many buy/sell orders get placed and not quite as much with how many shares get bought/sold, churn in that little 28% can have a huge effect on price considering they are probably 99% of the shareholders by headcount.
This is what almost every in-depth article on the situation is finding. Yes there is a "design flaw", but given the overall improvements in the iPhone 4, it is still performing (for most people) better than the 3G or 3GS. Think of it as two steps forward and one step back. To people upgrading from the 3G and 3GS, they still get a great phone with improvements across the board. This only really matters to those who want to demonstrate an issue.
Basically, haters gotta be hatin.